Nintendo News out of E3 - Metroid Dread and Breath of the Wild 2

 First, as a disclaimer, this isn't going to be a comprehensive list of all the announcements coming from Nintendo.

First off, there's a new teaser for the direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. BotW was massively popular, and so it's not a terrible shock to see a direct sequel (though it didn't come as rapidly as Majora's Mask did after Ocarina of Time.) The new teaser shows the land of Hyrule uprooted, resembling a bit more of the open skies of Skyward Sword, where islands of land float in the air, and Link flies between them.

As I've said before, I find myself feeling somewhat out of touch about Breath of the Wild, as I ultimately thought the game failed to deliver a satisfying experience - I guess I like a little more plot and a little more specificity in the dungeon environments and monsters to fight. And I hated how the weapons broke after five uses, and how tedious cooking was.

Really, though, my biggest problem with BotW was the way that it suffered from the same problems a lot of open-world games do - too much of it felt generic. Every dungeon had the same aesthetic, every mini-puzzle-dungeon could have been swapped for any other location, with the same ancient-sci-fi look inside. And while the expansive world was breathtaking, every corner of it had the same Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos, perhaps in different colors.

But I'm an old fogey who hasn't really loved a main console release of a Zelda game since Twilight Princess, so what do I know?

I'd love to do discover that BotW2 will address some of these issues, but we'll see.

Next, we've got Metroid Dread. Dread is not the announced-but-slowly-coming Metroid Prime 4. Instead, it's a return to the series' side-scrolling roots, but with a fully modern graphical style. Apparently a big part of the game involves Samus outrunning some nigh-indestructible robots called "EMMI," while exploring an alien world.

The footage looks pretty good, and at least what was playable at this announcement looked fairly solid.

Obviously, there are a ton of other stories coming out of E3, but these seemed to warrant mention.